424 Failed Dependency

A WebDAV action failed because another action it depended on failed.

Code: 424
Reason phrase: Failed Dependency
Class: 4xx Client error
Defined in: RFC 4918 section 11.4
Cacheable by default: No

What it means

Client error: the problem lies with the request. Repeating it unchanged will normally fail again.

Common causes. Batch WebDAV operations.

What to do. Fix the first failure in the batch.

How clients and crawlers treat it

Google Search. Like every 4xx except 429, it tells Google the content does not exist: an indexed URL is removed from the index, and a new one is not processed. Crawl frequency for the URL gradually drops. Source: Google Search Central, How HTTP status codes, and network and DNS errors affect Google Search.

Caching. Not cacheable by default (RFC 9110 section 15.1 does not list it). A cache stores it only when the response says so with Cache-Control or Expires.

Example response

HTTP/1.1 424 Failed Dependency
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Failed Dependency

How to send 424

nginx

location /example {
    return 424;
}

Apache (.htaccess)

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^example$ - [R=424,L]

PHP

http_response_code(424);
echo 'Failed Dependency';
exit;

Node.js

res.writeHead(424, { 'Content-Type': 'text/plain' });
res.end('Failed Dependency');

Python (Flask)

# in a view function
return 'Failed Dependency', 424

Change the paths to suit. In nginx, add_header needs always to apply to error responses.

Related codes

All status codes · All 4xx codes

Names and numbers from the IANA HTTP Status Code Registry. Google Search behaviour as documented by Google Search Central.